What Matt Arnold has accomplished as Milwaukee's President of Baseball Operations and General Manager has been objectively outstanding. Taking a franchise that was once considered a laughingstock and transforming it into a perennial powerhouse in a heated National League playoff race is no laughing matter. Yet after decades of ridicule, the Brewers stand atop the NL standings with a record-setting fourth consecutive NL Central division title to show for it.
Just last year, MLB executives voted Milwaukee the third-best front office in a poll conducted by The Athletic, and Arnold won the Executive of the Year award two years in a row. He has the respect of his peers and his fanbase as one of the best front office leaders in professional sports. However, he has a way to go before reaching the heights of the all-time greats, like Oklahoma City's Sam Presti in the NBA.
During a recent MLB-focused segment on The Bill Simmons Podcast, the titular Simmons mentioned in passing that he's recently heard rhetoric that Matt Arnold is becoming the MLB's Sam Presti, which is a fantastic comparison on the surface. Arnold, like Presti with the Thunder, has one of the best talent evaluation teams in the entire sport, a farm system and draft history full of success, a stockpile of assets to build for the future, and one of the best development programs in the league, all from what the masses consider a small-market franchise.
But when you dig just a little bit deeper, it's easy to see what separates Arnold from Presti, and why there's still a long way to go before the Brewers' sterling leader earns the right to put his name alongside Presti's.
If Matt Arnold wants to earn his Sam Presti comparison, the Milwaukee Brewers need to get the job done in the NBA Finals.
In his 19+ years leading the front office in Oklahoma City, Presti has more than 50 playoff wins, six Western Conference Finals appearances, and a championship title in 2025. Not only did he set the bar for his franchise, but he continually raised it and has committed to those goals to this day. Even when the Thunder hit the reset button in the post-Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook era, he quickly found a way to get his squad back into the Playoffs, leading to an eventual NBA title with that core.
The Brewers, on the other hand, haven't been so lucky in the postseason. Milwaukee has gone 5-15 in Playoff games since Matt Arnold took over as leader of the front office, with one NLCS appearance last season, in which they were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Presti had taken his fair share of flak over the years until this most recent iteration of the OKC Thunder broke through with a homegrown core and a superstar guard in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, whom they developed into an MVP-level talent after acquiring him in a trade early in his career. Maybe the Brewers will follow in that track, and one of Jackson Chourio or Brice Turang can become that for Milwaukee, while ace pitcher Jacob Misiorowski is already on that trajectory with his first Cy Young trophy in sight this season.
However, if Arnold wants to shed the negative narratives that surround him and the Brewers, as Presti did with his 2025 title run in Oklahoma City, he needs some postseason success to prove it. Luckily for him, there may not be a better opportunity for them to achieve that dream than in 2026.
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